This invention relates to methods of and apparatus for identifying peaks corresponding to the same chemical component in a series of liquid chromatograms.
The present invention relates particularly to methods and apparatus for identifying the peak in each chromatogram corresponding to the same component without foreknowledge of the chromatographic behavior of any component in the sample, or even the number of components in the sample.
Optimizing the separation of chemical components in a sample has presented problems with prior art liquid chromatographic techniques. The problem can be particularly difficult when two or more chemical components would normally try to elute fairly close together on a specific column and with a specific eluent.
The prior art liquid chromatographic techniques have included chromatographing a sample using several different eluents composed of varying mixtures of two binary eluents to try to find an eluent composition which maximizes the minimum difference of any pair of peaks in the chromatogram.
For many samples the prior art techniques have required isolation of each of the components of the sample and have required so many experiments to resolve the informaton required that the prior art techniques have been essentially impractical.
The prior art techniques have required, for many samples, that the separation be developed by someone who is skilled in the art of chromatography and who could understand the chromatograhic behavior experimentally of each of the components of the sample.
It is a primary object of the present invention to avoid the problems presented by the prior art techniques and to maximize the minimum difference of any pair of peaks in a chromatogram by methods and apparatus which do not require involvement of someone skilled in the art of chromatography.
It is a closely related object of the present invention to separate the minimum difference in retention times of different components as much as possible and to do so by methods and apparatus which do not require foreknowledge of the chromatographic behavior of any component in the sample or even the number of components in the sample.
Other objects of the present invention include developing a technique to identify the number of components in a sample, correlating the components retention time as a function of eluent composition, determining the optimal separation based on a minimal number of chromatographic separations of a sample of unknown composition and developing a technique which correctly handles a chromatographic system having multiple peak reversals or peak fusions.